Despite the increase in reserve requirement and the reduction in financial liquidity by about PHP57b, money supply growth will remain flush. Indeed, by the central bank’s own estimates, growth will likely slow to 15-17% from over 30% in recent months. As a result, we maintain that any knee-kerk spike in interest rates will eventually be smoothed downward, especially since the inflation outlook remains benign. We continue to expect a 50-bp rise in policy rates in the next 26 months (that is, to the end of 2015), in well spaced-out 25-bp increments.
Banks: MBT declares PHP1/sh cash dividend. Metrobank (MBT – HOLD) declared cash dividends of PHP1/sh, in line with our forecasts. At the current price this translates to a dividend yield of 1.3%. Record and payment dates have yet to be set following approval from the central bank.
Energy: PCOR raises PHP5.4b as retirement fund sells shares.
Petron Corp (PCOR – BUY) disclosed the Petron Corp Employees’ Retirement Plan (PCERP) sold 470m common shares of PCOR at PHP11.50/sh amounting to PHP5.4b via private placement last 26 Mar. Settlement is on 1 April. Proceeds will be used to partially pay PCERP’s advances from PCOR totaling PHP16.2b as of 9M13. The shares sold represent around 34% of PCERP’s total holdings in PCOR. Prior to the transaction, PCERP owned 14.79% or around 13.9b common shares of PCOR. Post-sale, PCOR’s free-float is now nearly 22%, while PCERP still owns 9.8% of PCOR’s common shares.
-Maybank ATR
No comments:
Post a Comment